Tag: fiction

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Dissecting Two E-rejection™ Slips.

If you’re a writer, feedback is a great thing, although less so if you’re a sound engineer. But the quality can vary considerably. Let’s consider two of my recent rejection slips, or the e-mail equivalent thereof. I think I’ll trademark the term e-rejection™.

We’ll endure the bad one first.

An anthology publisher sent me an e-rejection™ to my short story The Strange Case of Mr Brown, with the opinions of three readers.

Two of them commented that the story was bland, but neither of them offered up any specifics about why they thought so. With that information, I could have refined the weak parts. The third one pointed out that the eponymous Mr Brown had an eidetic memory, and that this case wasn’t strange, but I believe the reviewer missed the point that the, “case,” also referred to an unusual court hearing.

And now for something a lot better.

Some time ago, I sent a synopsis of my novel Fifty Million Nicker to an publisher. Less than two weeks later, they asked for the whole shebang.

In the e-rejection™, they told me that they felt the story didn’t take off and lacked a sense of drama or excitement. But they planted a useful nugget halfway through that summed up the areas for improvement: “You needed to surprise us with unexpected twists, and real obstacles, and genuine peril for the protagonist to overcome.”

Essentially, they were telling me to up my game, and I agreed with 90% of the criticism. I’d spent so long honing and polishing it that I’d never stepped back and considered if I could improve the actual story. And I’m now halfway through rewriting the some of the sections.

The common thread.

Both publishers commented that they liked my writing style, the latter even stated they would be happy to consider future work. When I write, I work to the principle that a sentence is only successful when you understand it after one reading. So it annoys me when I read a headache like this: “He knew that she wanted him to think that she had failed to call his bluff.” That’s not from a real book, thank goodness.

If you’re a publisher and want to slate consider the aforementioned works, I’m happy to send them on.

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Teaser Tuesday: Flesh Wounds by Chris Brookmyre.

Note he's now known as Chris. Topher Grace bought the rest of his name.Every Tuesday, the Should Be Reading blog runs a Teaser Tuesday. You choose two sentences at random from your current book and post them. The only rule is that spoilers are banned.

So I grabbed Chris Brookmyre’s Flesh Wounds. I’ve seen him twice at live events, and the last time, he signed my copy of this book. I resisted asking him if anyone ever mistakes him for Irvine Welsh.

Here’s a quote from page 245.

‘The autopsy hasn’t been completed yet, but I think she was murdered. She hadn’t touched a drop in years, but her house was staged to make it look like she was back on the drink with a vengeance.”

I was introduced to him via All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye. In fact, most of his titles are as humorous as his prose, although it helps if you understand the Glasgow dialect, as I do. He’s described as a comedy crime writer, and while Flesh Wounds is an altogether darker story, there’s still a laugh on nearly every page.

I’m open to suggestions for which of his books I should read next.

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The End of The Beginning.

Ye gods! I knew I was living under a rock with LiveJournal, yet I didn’t realise the exact extent until other users started hitting the Like button. I’m unaccustomed to such a response, and I much appreciate it.

I chose WordPress over sites such as Blogger because I have a couple of friends here already. Even the range of basic features are bewildering; when I typed Like button in the previous paragraph, it gave me a Wikipedia link to the Like button page. After a little more kicking the tyres, I’m sure I’ll soon crawl into the 21st century.

Today I’m talking about endings. I recently read two short story anthologies by the same publisher: one from 2011, the other from this year. It struck me that a high number of the pieces in both of these did not have a proper ending, in fact the editor seemed to prefer this style. In some cases, the author would conclude with a limp or vague paragraph. In other cases, it would simply stop, leaving me checking for a missing page and in a couple of cases, asking, “And?” out loud.

It was disappointing rather than annoying because a lot of the stories in the anthology contained great ideas that were let down by their execution.

I try to give my stories a twist ending, or at least a clear marker the reader has reached the end. I don’t always manage, however. I recently received a rejection from a publisher looking for funny stories because, “… the ending lacked a good punch line.” To me, a rounded ending is important in a short story. Even if the reader is meant to be left in some doubt, there ought to be enough clues or information in the body of the story to narrow it down to two or three possible options about what might happen next.

One important exception, however, is autobiographical writing. I’m going to come back to this in more detail on Monday. For purely fictional writing, however, an ending is king.

Photo of mug with,
Not The Booker Prize, nor The Nine O’Clock News.

I was going to leave it until Monday to post about the Not the Booker Prize run by The Guardian, but the deadline is midnight on Sunday.

In my last entry, I mentioned my writing sensei Zöe Venditozzi. Her novel has been shortlisted, and I encourage you to click on the photo above and vote for it before the deadline of midnight on Sunday.

That’s not just because I know her, but because it’s a cracking character-driven piece from a début novelist, featuring alongside established authors Neil Gaiman and Kate Atkinson. It also happens to feature a chap with my very initials who happens to volunteer at hospital radio, just as I do.

To cast your nomination, you’ll need to create a Guardian account and write a short review in the comments. As the paper says, Comment is free, and so is your vote.

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Taking The Lid Off The Pen

When you speak to a lot of authors, it’s common to hear that they were always writing stories as children or experimenting with poetry as teens. However, I’ve only been writing for three years, since 29 October 2010, in fact. That was the day I signed up to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on a whim, since everyone else was doing it.

From high school until that point, I’d written hardly any fiction. Since then, I’ve entered NaNoWriMo every year and written dozens of short stories, many of them under the tutorship of Zöe Venditozzi, whom I’m sure would like you to buy her book. I’m also pleased to report that I’ve had a flash fiction piece published in The Fiction Desk, while FourW will publish one of my short stories next month. More on the latter when it happens.

Although I didn’t write fiction until three years ago, I have kept a blog for a long time, and it’s still a powerful way of spreading your message, even in these days of Twitter and Facebook. I don’t plan to give up my with ageing LiveJournal for my day-to-day activities, but I did want to start afresh with WordPress for discussing my writing.

I’m viewing this as an experiment, and it might not last. After all, the more you write about writing, the less time you have to write. But I hope I can whip myself enough to keep this place updated, and more importantly, to make sure you want to read it.

One final thought: I’ve used the tag-line Carry on for a long time, before that Keep Calm poster ever came out. I’m debating whether to have a tag-line at all, and if so, what should it be?